


Seaward with the Dawn

by genarti



Series: Wings of the Day [1]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Faramir cameo, Gen, Gondor, Melancholy, Minas Tirith, Pastiche, do places count as characters if I describe them at sufficient length
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 21:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13773042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: The sun of early spring rose silver over the Pelennor; its light came wavering through a bleached and overcast sky.





	Seaward with the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saraste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/gifts).



**Minas Tirith, T.A. 2987**

The sun of early spring came silver at dawn over the Pelennor. Its light wavered through a bleached and overcast sky. On a fair day, the walls of the Guarded City of Minas Tirith gleamed as if wrought of pearl and studded with crystal, save only the outer wall of grim black, and the pennants upon its proud battlements snapped and fluttered; and sunlight broke like ocean waves over the proud men who stood sentinel below those pennants, and glittered from their _mithril_ helms. Today was no such day. To the Lady who stood at a window in the great Citadel, the guards below seemed to be rather ants or small dark crabs, scuttling across the rock to their posts. 

She was tall, straight and proud as the prince’s daughter she was, and the blood of the kings of old ran true in her; great was her beauty, and her black hair fell unbound in rippling waves. Yet weariness had graven deep in her pale face, and hollowed her farseeing eyes. She seemed a lily, fair and fading, waiting for the frost; and yet flowering gladly still, until such time as her winter came.

She looked not to the East, though the Citadel was built for men to do so. The darkness which brooded there lay out of sight, save the ill-favored smudge of the Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Shadow, that fenced the evil land of Mordor; but the blood of Westernesse flowed through the veins of Finduilas, the Gentle Lady of Gondor, and her eyes could see far as Men count it. That gloomy smudge smote her heart and oppressed her spirits. She had lived more than ten years now in its shadow, without learning to bear its weight in the manner of those born to the great City. She turned her storm-grey gaze instead southwards across the wide fields of the Pelennor, and what she saw gladdened her weary spirit.

On such a morning as this, the mist lay heavy across the fair and fertile townlands; and, covering field and orchard, barn and byre, it folded softly over roofs and apple-trees and even the great out-wall of the Rammas Echor, and buried them in rippling sea-silver. The eastern wind had slacked, so that only small shreds of mist drifted upward; and its surface billowed and breathed, and lapped delicately at the lip of the third wall of the City. It seemed to Finduilas on such mornings that almost she might step forth, and pass through the doorways and gates, until she stood once more on a sea-shore: less substantial than the true Sea, but still kin to it. The great blade of rock that clove the city in two, shouldering eastwards below her and to one side, seemed the keel of some great ship, slicing through the waves of a misty ocean; and she, high within the White Tower of Ecthelion, seemed instead a lookout high upon a mast, a lady mariner gazing upon the Emyn Arnen that rose up at the horizon.

From among the clouds came a high thin yelping. Not gulls, but geese; yet sea-birds of a sort, for she remembered the geese feeding upon the eel-grass of the brackish marshes that lay here and there in the Bay of Belfalas where she had spent her girlhood. She looked up to see the birds pass overhead. Their breasts were white, speckled with dark spots like small islands flung across a bay; and their wings were dark against the diffuse sunlight. They were on their way north to the icy shores of Forochel, far beyond any land Finduilas had seen. No more eel-grass for them, until their return; unless it grew in chill Forochel as well. She did not know.

“Fly, steadfast hearts,” she murmured to them. She was smiling, she found to her surprise, with a quiet joy. “Soar above the White City, and ever onward to the Sea. Carry the greetings of the Lady of Gondor to those salt shores. For alas! she lies here fenced in stone and hedged about with land, hard by shadow, far beyond the reach of any wave. Yet love and duty have anchored her here. Though half her heart flies back to the shores you depart, she would change neither.”

A small sound came behind her: the scuffing of a child’s bare foot on the stone floor. “Mother?” came the voice of her younger son, still blurred by sleep.

Finduilas did not turn; but she smiled more widely, and she stretched out one of her soft pale hands. It seemed to glow with nearly the same seashell lustre as the mist far below, here in this dim morning room of half-lit stone. “Come, little one, my Faramir. Come and see the morning.”

He padded across the room and slipped his small hand into hers; and his mother stooped suddenly to scoop him up, and the child’s surprised laughter kindled her own. She kissed his brow and settled him against her hip. “There, look, my son. For the geese are traveling to the North, and spring is truly here.”


End file.
